


The Sacrifice

by Hexiva



Category: Legion (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bodysharing, Human/Parasite Relationships, Hurt/Comfort, Legion Season 2, M/M, Self-Sacrifice, Suicidal Thoughts, The Astral Plane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21605554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hexiva/pseuds/Hexiva
Summary: Syd told David to help Farouk, and David loves her, so he's going to do it. But he can't let Oliver and Lenny suffer because of him, so he offers Farouk a hostage trade: himself for Oliver.
Relationships: Amahl Farouk | Shadow King/David Haller
Comments: 2
Kudos: 39





	1. Deal With the Devil

David reaches out to find the Shadow King’s mind. It’s easy: the monster is looking for him. He’s been away for a year, but the monster is still looking for him.

He shuts his eyes, and finds himself sitting on a ski lift, staring down at the ground far below. He starts, and looks up hurriedly.

“Hey, handsome,” says Lenny, and, “What’s cooking, good-looking?” says Oliver from his other side. The three of them are crammed into the ski lift, travelling over an abandoned theme park, and Lenny tosses an arm over his shoulders.

David shifts uncomfortably. He’s never been afraid of heights, but right now his heart is pounding. He’s not sure he has the courage to do what he needs to do. What Syd needs him to do. What his friends need him to do.

“I want to help you,” he blurts out.

Oliver laughs, and Lenny raises an eyebrow. “C’mon, kiddo. You’re gonna have to do better than that. Have to get up pretty early to fool this old fox, right?” She jerks her head dismissively towards Oliver.

“I’m not trying to trick you,” David insists. He wishes he was. He wishes he wasn’t about to do this.

He thinks, _When a plate breaks, you don’t try to fix it,_ and steels himself.

“Syd told me I need to help you, to save the world, and I - I trust Syd, I love her, and I - I’m going to do it,” he says, forcing the words out.

Lenny leans in, one hand on his thigh, her eyes intense. She studies his face. “Show me,” she says, all levity gone from her voice, and David imagines he can see the parasite living behind her eyes. He can feel her breath on his face, and his heart rate speeds up. He’s not sure it’s fear.

“O - okay,” David says. He pulls himself together, taking a deep breath. He reaches into his mind, and pulls out the memory of talking to Syd. He clasps it in his hands, a small purple stone glowing from within.

Lenny snatches it out of his hands, pops it into her mouth, and crunches it like a lollipop. Her eyes light up, and widen in wonder. She swallows slowly, digesting it.

“So,” Oliver says, making David swivel his head to face the other way. “The hero has to save the villain. Beautiful.” He leans against David’s side. “Don’t you love the irony of it?”

“No,” David says, tersely.

“Got misgivings?” Lenny says, slyly. “Thinking of backing out before you can make an, uh - ”

“Deal with the devil?” Oliver suggests, cheerfully.

“Yeah, that,” Lenny says, pointing to him.

“No,” David says again. He takes a deep breath, and steels himself. “I’m going to do it. I’m going to help him - it - _you -_ I’m going to help you find your body. But in return, I - you have to let Oliver go.” His fists clench, and he meets Lenny’s eyes. “I won’t help you while you’re holding my friend hostage.”

“Well now, that sounds like a gas,” Oliver says, forcing David to turn his head and look at him again. “But see, if the hippie walks, where do I go? Not exactly a lot of bodies out there just for the taking - especially telepaths.”

David grits his teeth, and swallows. “I - you can - ” He sucks in another breath. _Don’t cry, don’t cry._ “You can have my body. That’s what you want, isn’t it? You - you get everything you want, and you let my friend go, and you - you save the world, or whatever.”

Oliver’s eyes have gone wide, and David wonders whether the shock is Oliver’s or the Shadow King’s.

“That’s all?” Lenny asks. “I let the old guy go, and you fly the white flag?”

“I - ” David’s words catch in his throat, and he swallows and tries again. “Look. We both know I’m - I’m a mess, okay? I was supposed to be - Dr. Bird said I wasn’t crazy, it was just - you, but you - you’re gone and I’m still hearing the voices. If I can’t - if I can’t ever have a normal life - then - I can’t just let someone else suffer instead of me.” He’s not making any sense, and he knows it. “I can’t. The world is going to end, and I can’t - I can’t stop that, and - Syd says _you_ can, so I - ” He cuts himself off, biting back tears.

“Hey,” Lenny says, putting a hand on his arm. “Don’t get all soppy on me, okay, kid? It’s going to be okay. You’re supposed to be the good guy here, right? Stop acting like you’re some piece of dog shit Melanie Bird scraped off the street. You’re better than her. We’re _gods,_ remember?”

David stares at her. He can almost imagine that it’s Lenny talking to him, the real Lenny, his friend, and not some puppet the monster’s cooked up to torture him.

But he knows better than that. Was there ever a real Lenny?

“I’m not the good guy,” David says, gritting his teeth. “But if I were, this is - this is what I’d have to do.” He swallows. “Do we have a deal?”

“Meet me at the coast when the sea glows blue,” Oliver says, and a mental image pops into David’s head, a place and a time to meet. “I’ll even throw in the girl - ” he gestures to Lenny - “Out of the goodness of my heart.”

“How do I know it’s not a trap?” David asks.

Lenny laughs. “You said it yourself, kiddo. You’re giving me everything I want. Why would I want to stab you in the back?” She offers him a hand. “Shake on it?”

David stares at her hand, and then shakes his head. “I’ll be there,” he says. “I’ll - I’ll be there.”

He cuts the contact immediately. He can’t bear to stay intertwined with the Shadow King’s mind a second longer, not when he knows that this might be his last day of freedom.

Alone in his room in Division Three, David slumps down onto his bed, his head in his hands. He wants to run away. It’s not too late: Farouk can’t hold him to the deal. It’s not as if he owes Farouk anything. He could just stay here, get into bed with Syd, and forget about all of this.

But if he does that, Oliver will pay for it. And Lenny. And Future Syd. He can’t bring himself to help Farouk, to save his _life,_ without saving his friends first. And the only way to do that is -

Alone in the dark, finally, he lets himself cry.


	2. Reunion

David slips away from Division Three in the middle of the night. He can’t bear to say goodbye to Syd, so he leaves her a note, explaining where he’s gone and why. She needs to know that he might not be in control of his own body next time she sees him. David’s not going to let the Shadow King use his face to trick his friends. 

He teleports a mile or so away from the meeting place and walks along the coast. He feels like he’s on death row, like this is his last night alive. And in a way, it is. He doesn’t know what the Shadow King will do to him - keep him alive to torture, or destroy his consciousness and take over? 

It doesn’t matter much. Either way, his life is over.

In a way, he feels - relieved. He’s been tired all his life, struggling to keep his head above water, and hope  _ hurts.  _ Now he can just - give up. Just sink under the water and let someone else take over.

He was no good at living, anyway.

The beach at night is painted in shades of blue, the sand stretching away ahead of him and the ocean lapping at his feet. The water is lit blue by a faint bioluminescence, and it’s - beautiful.

Not such a bad place to die, really.

He turns around a cliff, and sees Oliver sitting there, in the shadow of a vast rock jutting up from the sand. He’s sitting on a cushion, his cream-colored suit preternaturally clean, and he’s sipping from a fine champagne flute, a bottle open on the rock next to him. 

Oliver looks up as David approaches, and David meets his eyes and knows, with a bone-deep certainty, that this isn’t Oliver. This is Amahl Farouk.

“Champagne?” the Shadow King offers him, pouring a second flute full of champagne and handing it to him. “After all, this is a momentous occasion.”

David starts to refuse, and then thinks better of it and downs it in one gulp. It fizzes down his throat and into his stomach. His hands are shaking. “Just - ” His voice breaks. “Please. Just get this over with. You got what you wanted. Don’t screw with me now.”

The Shadow King gives him an unreadable look, and stands. “Very well.” He holds a hand out to David, and his voice drops, soft and seductive. “Come to me, my dear.”

David shuts his eyes tightly, and steps closer. The Shadow King takes his hand and pulls him close. David feels the brush of lips against his, and then - 

It’s a flood rushing into him, like black oil pouring down his throat, soaking into his blood, staining his flesh, and he tries to scream but his mouth isn’t his own, and there are a thousand voices screaming out in his head, and there’s a terrible, alien exultation rising in his chest, the Shadow King’s laughter in his head, the monster’s delight warring with his disgust - 

Oliver crumples to the sand in front of him, and David catches his breath, terrified that he’s been tricked, that Oliver is dead and he’s given up his life for  _ nothing  _ and the monster is going to destroy the world. He drops to his knees and, with shaking hands, checks Oliver’s pulse.

It’s there. Oliver’s alive. Oliver’s safe. He’s done it. He’s done it. 

The monster is back in his head. He can  _ feel  _ it, overwhelmingly familiar and terrifying, like a nightmare he can’t wake up from, and a sob overwhelms him. He curls up in on himself, there in the sand, and sobs.

He feels, in this moment, exactly the way he did before he tied a knot in a power cord. The monster has him, and there’s no way out. He is completely alone now.

A hand comes to rest on his shoulder, and arms wrap themselves around him. “Shh, shh,  _ joonam,”  _ says an accented voice. “I’m here. I’m here.”

David doesn’t recognize the voice, but it’s somehow familiar. He lets himself be held, pressing his face into the strange man’s shoulder, and cries. He doesn’t want to think. He doesn’t care who the man is. He just wants to disappear into the ocean, forget who he is, forget about the monster and the plague and the monk and everything that’s gone wrong in his messed-up life.

“Sshh,” the man says, and holds him tighter. “I won’t hurt you. I promise. I love you. I love you.”

David doesn’t say anything. He can’t form a solid thought, and he’s crying too hard to talk. He just clings to the strange man and lets himself cry. And so they sit there on the beach, for what might be minutes or hours, until David is too tired to cry, and he simply lies there in the other man’s arms.

“Who are you?” David asks, at last, his voice ragged and raw.

“You know who I am,” the man answers, quietly.

David shuts his eyes and swallows back more tears. “Are you going to kill me?” he asks.

Amahl Farouk’s arms tighten around him. “No,  _ joonam.” _

David shudders. “Why?” His voice comes out plaintive and desperate. “Why won’t you just - let me die?”

Farouk draws in a breath. “I need you, my dear.” He lets his chin rest on David’s head. “When I thought you were dead, when you vanished - it hurt.” He chuckles, softly. “You were right when you called me your phantom limb. I am part of you. I know that now. What am I without you?” A hand comes up and brushes through David’s sweaty hair. “I don’t want to find out.”

Despite himself, David takes a pathetic kind of comfort in the gentle touch. Why shouldn’t he? He knows this is the best he’s going to get. He leans into Farouk’s arms. “I’m so tired,” he mumbles.

“I know,” Farouk says, very quietly. “I’m sorry.” He brushes David’s hair out of his face for him. “I owe you a great debt. And I  _ will  _ repay it. I promise you that. Once this is over, when I have my body back - I’ll let you go, if that’s what you want. Whatever you want, it’s - it’s yours.”

David feels a distant spark of anger, but he’s too tired to let it catch fire. “Why now?” he asks. “You - you had - thirty years. Why are you telling me all of this now?”

Farouk is silent for a moment. David wonders if he’s caught Farouk in the lie so easily, if Farouk is going to give up and go back to torturing him. He can’t quite bring himself to care. 

“I don’t want to be the monster under your bed anymore,” Farouk says, softly. “I was a fool to think I could live your life for thirty years and not care about you. I don’t want to hurt you anymore.”

David laughs, quiet and tired. “I wish . . .” He doesn’t finish his sentence. He wishes Farouk could have decided that decades ago. He wishes Farouk had never found him. He wishes he was someone else.

“I know,” Farouk says. “I do, too.”


End file.
